by John Saul
It was surprisingly simple. Her landlord was actually relieved when she told him she’d changed her mind about renewing her lease—he had three people willing to take the apartment at a rent far higher than Judith would have paid. And the new tenant, anxious to move in as quickly as possible, instantly agreed to buy whatever furniture Judith left behind.
She left all of it, packing only her clothes and personal belongings into the foot locker she’d been using as a coffee table, and shipping her books and records ahead.
The moment she dreaded most—the moment of telling Floyd Morales that she wasn’t signing the contract for next year—turned out to be almost as easy.
“Well, you’re certainly not making my life any easier,” the principal had commented. “But I can’t say that I blame you. There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve thought about getting the hell out of here myself.”
Judith’s brows had risen, but Morales had only shrugged. “What can I do? I grew up here … my family lives here—maybe I feel like I owe them something.” But then his gaze had drifted to the window and the littered playing field, fenced in like a prison, that lay beyond his office. “I don’t know,” he’d mused. “Sometimes it feels so hopeless.” At last he’d straightened up and taken on his usual briskness. “But there are still kids who want an education, and deserve one. So I guess I just can’t give up and go away.”
Judith felt the sting of his words. “Is that what you think? That I’m giving up? Cutting and running?”
Morales had apologized immediately. “Of course not. In fact, you’re doing exactly what I did when I came back here after college. You’re going home, and helping them out. Nobody can condemn that.” He’d offered her his hand. “They’re lucky to be getting you. You have a way with the kids.”
Judith had grinned ruefully. “I wish that were true.”
“It is,” Morales had insisted. “I know it’s been rough, but you’ve had less trouble with the kids than most of the teachers. And you’ve turned at least half a dozen of them around. Kept them in school when they were on the verge of dropping out.”
“Half a dozen,” Judith had repeated. “Out of how many hundred? Somehow, it doesn’t seem like much to me.”
Still, as she’d left the school for the last time, she felt a sharp pang of regret. There were a few students—not too many, but some—to whom she wished she’d been able to say good-bye.
The next morning, when she read an account of a gang fight the night before and found that one of her best students hadn’t survived it, the last of her regrets evaporated.
Now, as she drove the final fifty miles north from Interstate 40, up into the neck of land between the Navajo reservation to the west and the Apache lands to the east, she was still certain she’d done the right thing.
The New Mexican sky, an immense expanse of brilliant blue that seemed—impossibly—to have grown even larger than she remembered from her childhood, spread above her, dwarfing even the mesas that rose from the desert floor in the distance.
She was tempted to turn off the highway for an hour or so and pay a short visit to the vast ruins at Chaco Canyon, but as she came to the turnoff, she changed her mind, suddenly eager to see Borrego once more.
Borrego.
The town she’d grown up in, but never, until last week, expected to come back to.
She came over the last rise in the gently rolling desert floor and pulled over to the side of the road, parked the Honda on the shoulder and got out of the car. She perched on the hood, staring out at the town in the distance.
Borrego could have been beautiful: sprawled at the foot of one of the mesas, it lay near the mouth of Mordida Canyon, a deep, narrow gorge that, though only the tiniest fraction of the size of the Grand Canyon to the west, had a unique beauty all its own, its flat bottom dotted with cottonwoods, a gentle stream flowing through it year ’round.
The town hadn’t been built on the river, for the Mordida, like all the other streams in the region, could turn into a raging torrent within a few moments, fueled by the torrential rains that could pour out of the desert sky with no warning at all.
Not that the Mordida was a threat to the town any longer; indeed, the river had been safe from flash floods for more than fifty years, ever since a small dam had been constructed across one of the canyon’s narrows, generating the electricity needed to power the refinery that old Samuel Moreland had built when he discovered oil in the area.
For that was what Borrego really was—an oil town. But not a boom town like the bonanza towns of Texas. No, Borrego was only a tiny service village, a place for the refinery workers to live, along with the drillers and the crews who looked after the dam. As the oil reserves around Borrego had always been limited, so too had the prospects for the town, which had reached its peak shortly after the dam and refinery had been constructed. Ever since, it had slowly been declining. The Sheffields had moved from Borrego to Los Angeles for just that reason, when Judith was sixteen. Now, squinting against the glare of the sun, she could just make out the worn buildings that made up the town.
A layer of dust seemed to lie over Borrego, a layer that even the violent desert rain squalls could never quite seem to wash away. It was almost as if the town had deliberately ignored the expansive red, orange, and brown landscape that surrounded it, and become afraid of the limitless cobalt-blue dome of sky above. Borrego appeared to huddle defensively against the ground, many of its old adobe buildings long since replaced with a collection of cinder-block structures whose metal or asphalt roofs absorbed more of the summer heat than they reflected.
Judith’s gaze shifted to the top of the mesa, and for a moment she imagined she could actually see the little Kokatí Pueblo. That, she hoped, was still unchanged, but after her visit to the Hopi mesas yesterday, when she’d seen the same tin-roofed, cinder-block houses that so many of the Indians had moved into—leaving their beautiful pueblos to begin crumbling in the weather—her hope had faded. It was certainly possible—even probable—that the Kokatís had also abandoned the old village for something that was not better, but was only new.
She climbed back into the Honda, started the engine, and drove the last few miles into Borrego. A mile and a half out of town, set back from the road, the oil refinery stood exactly as she remembered it—a maze of pipes and towers, with a small tank farm behind it. Then there was the cutoff to the canyon—still unpaved, little more than twin ruts leading off across the desert floor toward the cleft in the mesa.
At last she came to the town itself, its boundary marked by the squat, ugly orange building that was the A&W stand. Not one of the new ones—bright and airy, with tables and a fast-food counter—but the old style, with a walk-up window and a couple of teenage carhops wearing outdated uniforms, lounging at a picnic table at the edge of the deserted parking lot.
Judith wondered if the A&W was still the place where the kids met in the evening, shouting back and forth between their cars, then racing off into the night, going nowhere, only to return to the drive-in a few minutes later.
The main street was unchanged. The same two competing markets stood facing each other, one of them flanked by the dry goods store, the other by a drugstore and the post office. Beyond them were a few new shops that Judith didn’t recognize, and some of the old ones were gone.
Two blocks down, opposite the small movie theater that was now boarded up, stood the Borrego Building—a four-story brick structure that housed the bank on its main floor and the offices of Borrego Oil Company on the floors above. When it was built, it had been intended to be the first of many multistoried buildings in what everyone had hoped would become a small city.
But Borrego was still nothing more than the little town it had always been, crouched in the high desert, all but bypassed by the development along the interstate to the south.
Yet Judith found she was glad so little change had come to the town. She felt oddly comforted to recognize some of the people who stood chatting in front of the t
iny post office, their faces weathered by the desert climate, but their features—like the town’s own—essentially unchanged, only more deeply ravaged by time and the elements than they’d been a decade ago.
She left the town behind, driving east for a mile, then turned up the long drive that led to the foot of the mesa and the big house—a bastard-Victorian structure that stood defiantly at odds with its environment, not quite a mansion, but by far the largest home in Borrego. Old Samuel Moreland had built it for his wife at a time when no one else was building such things. His son Max, and Rita Moreland, still lived there.
Surrounded by a grove of large cottonwoods that sheltered it from the sun and screened the most ornate of its gingerbread details from the viewer, it had a look of solidity and permanence to it that Judith admired. Tall, and somewhat narrow, it seemed to peer out at the desert with a spinsterish disapproval, as if eyeing its surroundings with thinly-veiled distaste. Judith pulled the Honda to a stop in front of the house, then stepped out into the cool shade of the cottonwood trees. Even before she’d mounted the steep flight of steps to the porch, the big door opened and Rita Moreland stepped out, her arms spread wide in welcome.
“Judith? Is it really you? I hadn’t thought you’d be here until tomorrow!”
Judith rushed up the steps and into the older woman’s embrace, then pulled away to get a good look at the woman who’d been the closest thing to a grandmother she’d ever had.
“You look wonderful, Aunt Rita.”
It was true. Rita Moreland, at seventy-two, looked no more than sixty. She still held her tall, somewhat angular frame perfectly erect, and she was dressed in the sort of simple linen skirt and blouse she had worn as long as Judith could remember. Around her neck was an antique silver and turquoise squash-blossom necklace, and her wrists held several bracelets, most of them modern Hopi designs. Her hair, snow white, was rolled up into an elegant French twist, held in place by a silver comb. Only her eyes, alight with pleasure, belied her look of cool composure.
“Well, you’ve changed,” Rita replied. “All grown-up, and just as pretty as your mother. Although,” she added, cocking her head speculatively, “I think perhaps your hair’s starting to darken a little.”
Judith grinned. “It’s called aging, Aunt Rita. Is Uncle Max here?”
Rita’s eyes clouded for just a split second, then cleared as she shook her head. “Oh, no—always at the office, or the plant. You know Max—he’ll work till he drops, even though he keeps promising me he’ll slow down. Now come on, let’s get you inside.” Before Judith could protest, Rita had darted down the steps and pulled one of Judith’s bags from the backseat of the Honda.
Upstairs, Judith gazed with unabashed pleasure at the room Rita had chosen for her. It was a large chamber in the corner—almost two rooms, really, since the tower that rose at the southwest corner of the house was incorporated into it. There was an immense four-poster bed, and in the tower itself, a cushion-filled love seat and a large easy chair. Five windows were set into the curving wall of the tower, and the view, framed by a pair of cottonwoods, was a panorama of desert and mesas, with the town no more than a small collection of buildings in the foreground.
“You can see almost fifty miles from up here,” Rita told her, reading her thoughts. “Of course, it would be even lovelier without the town and the refinery, but without those we wouldn’t be here at all, would we?” She lifted one of the suitcases onto the bed and snapped it open. “Let’s get you unpacked. By then Max should be home and we can all have a gin and tonic.”
Judith firmly closed the suitcase. “I have an even better idea,” she said. “Let’s leave the unpacking for later, and you and I can have something right now. It’s been a long drive.”
Long, she thought as she followed Rita back downstairs, but worth it. All her doubts were now gone.
She was glad to be home.
Stretched out on a chaise under one of the cottonwoods, sipping slowly at her second drink, Judith felt a sense of ease and comfort she hadn’t experienced for years. Rita had filled her in on most of the news of the last decade, what there was of it. Many of the kids she’d grown up with were still here, married now, most with at least one child. Laura Sanders, to whom she’d promised to write but never had, had come back five years ago, graduating from nursing school and taking a job at Borrego High.
The one piece of news that had truly upset her was Rita’s recounting of the death of Alice Arnold four years ago.
“How did Jed take it?” Judith asked. In her mind she pictured the little boy—only five or six when she’d last seen him—with his Kokatí mother’s dark skin and jet-black hair, and his father’s brilliant blue eyes. She remembered Jed as a happy child, interested in everything he saw, full of questions, always eager to go exploring in the canyon or up on the mesa. Judith had baby-sat for him many times, once or twice taking care of him all weekend while Frank took Alice away, hoping to break her strange melancholy with trips to Santa Fe, or up into the Utah canyon lands. Judith had loved those weekends, taking care of Jed, riding up into the canyon with him perched on the saddle in front of her, or up to the mesa to visit his grandfather in Kokatí. Jed, his bright eyes darting everywhere, talking constantly, asking questions, urging her onward to explore.
To have lost his mother, when he was still only eleven …
“It was hard for him,” she heard Rita saying. “It was Jed who found her. He came home from school one day, and there she was …” Rita’s voice trailed off, and both the women were silent for a moment.
“How is he now?” Judith asked. “It’s such a terrible thing for a child that age.”
“It’s hard to say,” Rita replied. “In so many ways he’s so much like his mother. I’m afraid there’s a part of him no one will ever know. It’s almost as if he’s closed part of himself down.” Her eyes met Judith’s. “It’s very difficult for him, you know, being half Indian out here.”
“But not as difficult as it must have been for Alice, trying to live in Borrego after growing up in Kokatí. After she married Frank, her father barely spoke to her.”
“I know,” Rita sighed. “In their own way, the Indians can be every bit as prejudiced as we are.”
They talked on for a while, and finally Judith turned to a subject she’d been avoiding—the reason she was back in Borrego.
“What about Mrs. Tucker?” she asked. “How is she?”
Again, as when Judith had asked about Max, a troubled cloud passed over Rita Moreland’s eyes, but this time it didn’t pass. “I think maybe you should save that question for Greg,” she began.
“Greg?” Judith exclaimed. “You mean Greg is here too?”
Rita stared at her. “You mean you didn’t know?” she asked. “You had such a crush on him ten years ago, I thought that might have been one of the reasons you came back.”
A crush, Judith thought. The first great love of my life, and all it’s remembered as is a crush.
But of course infatuation was exactly what it had been.
Greg Moreland—Max and Rita’s nephew—had spent all his summers in Borrego, coming home from his boarding school each spring, impressing all the local girls with his blond curls and dimpled chin, as well as his sophistication, then leaving them each fall with broken hearts as he returned to New England, first for college, then for medical school. During the summer before his last year at Harvard Medical School it had been Judith’s turn to fall for him. Not that he’d even noticed her, of course, except to take a turn with her once or twice at the weekend dances at the union hall.
But it had been enough to make her fall in love with him—or at least develop a major crush—and when he’d left, she was sure she would die.
Not only hadn’t she died, but she’d quickly developed another crush on someone else—someone even more unattainable than Greg—and hadn’t even thought of Greg for the last five years.
“But what on earth is he doing back here?” she asked. “Somehow, I always p
ictured him opening a terribly successful Park Avenue practice in New York.”
Rita chuckled appreciatively. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see pretty much the same thing myself. But it turned out we were wrong. He did a residency in Boston, then came back here for one more summer to think things over. And he never left.” Rita beamed with as much pride as if Greg were her own son, instead of her nephew. “He started dropping in on Bob Banning at the clinic every now and then, just helping out when there was an emergency, and at the end of the summer he decided to stay until Christmas. That was six years ago, and he’s still here.”
“Does he live here?”
“Oh, no,” Rita replied. “He has a little house in town—nothing special, considering what his tastes used to be.”
Judith frowned. “But he has plenty of money, doesn’t he? Why hasn’t he built something terrific?”
Rita smiled cryptically. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she asked. “He’ll be here for dinner tonight.”
Judith stared at Rita for a moment, then cocked her head. “Is this part of a plan?” she asked archly.
Rita’s smile faded. “I wish it were,” she said softly. “But I don’t think I would have gone so far as to put poor Reba in the hospital.”
Judith’s laughter died on her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Rita assured her.
Judith said nothing, but lay back, relaxing in the warmth of the sun that was now beginning to drop toward the western horizon.
A lot in Borrego hadn’t changed at all.
But a lot else, she suddenly realized, had.
Unbidden, her thoughts returned to Alice Arnold, and she made a mental note to call Frank the next day.
So many things had happened here, so long ago.
And now she was back.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” Greg Moreland asked as he carefully unwrapped the gauze from Heather Fredericks’s arm.
Heather winced as the bandage came off the wound, then relaxed as she realized there was no pain at all. Still, the cut looked ugly, with its coating of dried blood and the four stitches the doctor had taken a week ago. “Okay,” she said. “Is there going to be a scar?”